A certain amount of callousness; disdain; and outright hatred must replace compassion, egalitarianism, and a sense of community cohesion if the neo-liberal version of “society” is to operate successfully.

When National’s Simon Bridges, fronted up on Radio NZ on 5 June, he apparently apologised for his role in the unjust evictions of 300 state house tenants for meth-testing results that have been shown by Chief Science Advisor, Sir Peter Gluckman, as bogus.

Bridges said;

“I’m sorry that the advice we got was wrong and has made this situation what it is.”

Except – it’s not an apology for the wrongful evictions at all. It’s a lamentation that “the advice we got was wrong”.

Soon after criticising the Coalition for “hiding debt in SOEs” – a capital offense that National was guilty of in 2009, and which contributed to bankrupting Solid Energy by 2015 – National Party’s finance spokesperson, Amy Adams, was at it again.

Now is the time of the year when we send in requests to that mysterious red-garbed being at the north pole for ‘goodies’ of one sort or another. This is my belated wish-list of gifts. But not gifts for myself. These are gifts for the whole of New Zealand…

National’s “grand plans” for 220 new social and transitional places remains woefully short of the 1,138 houses that National sold off to IHC’s Accessible Properties at the end of March. It is also unclear what is meant by ” transitional places”. Are these actual houses? Or motel units, à la Auckland-style;

Upper Hutt, NZ, 4 June – Residents in a State housing community in Upper Hutt are continuing to mobilise to strengthen opposition to planned sell-off of Housing NZ vacant land, and planned further demolition of so-called “un-safe, earthquake-prone” State houses.

In none of the Minister’s correspondence was he able to provide specifics as to where State houses were in the “wrong place”. The ‘best’ he could do was list five regions; Auckland East & South; Auckland North West & Central; South Island, Central North Island, and Lower North Island.

Wellington, NZ, 21 November – Around two hundred people gathered in Cuba Mall, central Wellington, as part of a nationwide day of protest at growing homelessness; poor standards of housing; state house privatisation, and lack of long-term stability in rental accomodation;

Information released under the Official Information Act (OIA) suggests that National’s oft-repeated claim that around “one third” ( or 22,000) of state houses are in the “wrong place and wrong size” is not supported by Housing NZ’s own figures.

Recent statements by Minister for Social Housing, Paula Bennett, Minister Responsible for Housing New Zealand, Bill English, Building and Housing Minister, Nick Smith, and Prime Minister John Key, have been shown to be deceptively misleading – and in many instances, outright lies.

State assets such as housing and schools are suffering a lack of maintenance, the likes of which we have seen only in Third World nations. The recent case of Northland College in Kaikohe revealed a badly run-down facility that was so delapidated that police asked to use them for training simulations because they represented the closest thing available to a “ghetto environment”